Is Fast Food Still Food?

Holy Cow, shifting away from fast food has been a 2-year long struggle for me already, but giving up egg and dairy without giving up fast food entirely - is that even possible??  Yes, as a matter of fact, it is possible.  Some facts:

McDonald's®

• The english muffin does not have egg or dairy in it.  Neither does the sausage.  The american cheese... well, that's stretching it a little... but I can eat a sausage McMuffin without suffering food side affects.
• Coffee with cream & sugar?  No.  Amazingly, McDonald's uses a real creamer, not a non-dairy creamer.  Ixnay on the offeecay.  This leads to another astonishing food fact - non-dairy creamer contains powdered milk.  So it's actually a dairy creamer.  Try Silk® creamer instead.
• French fries are potatoes, right?  Mostly right.  McD's french fries have milk in them.

McDonald's PDF ingredients list

Wendy's®

• French fries made only of potatoes!
• Baked potatoes made only of potatoes! (skip the sour cream)
• Chili made only of chili ingredients that do not include egg or dairy.  (skip the cheese)
• A side salad with romaine lettuce, carrots and tomatoes. (Italian dressing is ok at Wendy's, but not everywhere.)
• Wendy's web site is a little more difficult to navigate, but it is still possible to find the right information.

Wendy's Java Ingredients Finder

Taco Bell®

• Taco Bell has good nutrition/allergen information available on their web site.  I can eat tacos, preferably without the cheese.  Not unexpectedly, most menu items are out.

Taco Bell Allergen Info

Sonic®

•  Yess! Tater tots!
• Not much else, though.  Sonic has incomplete information available.  "* Bread: Sonic does not have a single bread formulation. Sonic purchases from local bakeries and ingredients and allergens may vary."

Sonic PDF Ingredients list

Q'Doba®

• The pork is safe.  The chicken, steak, shredded beef, ground beef and chorizo all contain milk.  Oh yeah, weird food fact - "milk" often means "butter".
• Rice is rice.
• The salsas are all safe, as is the guacamole.

Q'Doba PDF Ingredients list

I don't need to exist on fast food alone.  I do need to know that at the end of one of my grueling weeks I have an option or two about food.  I can be satisfied with that.

Starting Out

An unexpectedly lengthy and detailed discussion following a facebook post about a ham and swiss flavored veggie slice with Veganaise® on rice flour bread sandwich prompted me to start blogging my experiences with food.  So here we go and maybe I can even keep up with it!

About a month ago food allergen test results came from my nutritionist (mention my name).  The good news?  Well, there was none.  The bad news?  On a scale from 0 to 6: egg whites,  egg yolks, and whey rank a solid 4; milk and other milk products such as yogurt and cottage cheese rank a solid 3; whole wheat and asparagus rate a 2.  Wow, major lifestyle changes coming.  I spent some time in shock, freaking out and panicking, like anyone would.  One at a time things came to my attention that I was going to really REALLY miss.  Hagen Daas®.  OMG.  Lasagne.  Cookies!  Pizza!! Much whining ensued.

Regardless, I immediately did what I could to cut out all obvious and as much as possible non-obvious egg and dairy.  Goodbye breakfast burritos!  Goodbye suspiciously yellow tinted bread!  I decided to wait a while to remove the wheat - that seemed like too many things at once.  I was more bothered by the loss of convenience than by the lack of egg/dairy/wheat in my life.  So the first thing I did was go to all the fast food web sites and find out what, if anything, I could still eat.  More about that in a different post.

The point is, within 3 days the swelling I had been experiencing in my hands and feet went away.  Within 3 weeks I had shed about 15 lbs.  I'm still losing lbs 4-5 weeks later, but at a slower rate than initially.  I have so much more energy that I've had to stop taking some of my energy vitamin supplements because I stopped sleeping properly - turns out, milk products make me sleepy, who knew?  I don't particularly like this lifestyle change.  Weird foods (as I call them even though I shouldn't) are a lot of work to find and/or prepare.  Eating out becomes next to impossible unless one wants to subsist on salad, and even then there are limits.

But results are results.  Did I say at the beginning of this post that there was no good news?  That's not true.  The good news is other people have blazed the trail before me.  Most food products are clearly marked with common allergens.  Most restaurants do have allergen information available, many restaurants even have specialty items available.  Normal grocery stores have started carrying specialty items, so I don't suddenly have to double my grocery bill by doing all of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods and Sprouts.  Although I do make more trips to Whole Foods now than previously.  Best of all, I am not afflicted with the extremes of these allergens such as Celiac Disease.  I just have some food allergies.  So yeah, I'm whining, but I'm doing it.  And I already feel better than I have in years.